


Chicken

by PeopleGoBoom



Series: Intelligible Villains [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anxiety, Courage, Drinking, Gryffindor, Hogwarts House Sorting, Impostor Syndrome, Marauders, Marauders' Era, The Sorting Hat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 20:58:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10772307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeopleGoBoom/pseuds/PeopleGoBoom
Summary: Peter breaks into Dumbledore's office to confrontthat fucking hat.





	Chicken

Pete was drunk, so terribly drunk. He wanted to shout curses or else sing sad songs at the top of his voice, but he somehow managed to contain himself and do neither. Not even James' cloak, which he'd nicked on his way out of the dorm, would be much help if he woke up all the ghosts of Hogwarts. No, keep balancing that head of yours, boy. Keep balancing. No one needs to know you're not what they think. No one knows, and no one will need to know anything if you can just keep up the balancing act. 

He needed… a lot of things, but mainly he needed somewhere to be. Somewhere which was not here. The dorm was out, it was full of his friends, whom he just couldn't be around right now. He had stumbled out of there once he had realised how very very drunk he was, afraid that he would let something slip somehow. That would not do. Keep balancing, or else... 

Reality kept coming down upon his head every few minutes, after each thought circle had spun to its logical… well, continuation, really, and now here it was again. Reality. Reality was, he would be giving information to the other side, the side of the worst arses and the meanest bullies, not that there weren't some on both sides. He had promised to do that, and they didn't take well to broken promises. His mind still kept rattling the cage, looking for ways out, but he was smart enough to know there probably wasn't one to find. He'd turned it over and over in his mind for months now without finding anything, and besides, cages tended to be well-designed for keeping its occupants on the inside. 

And it wasn't just what he would do. It was what they had had him do already, thinking it would just be a one-time thing. A piece of information that he thought would be unimportant. It had seemed like such a small price to pay. And now it made a neat welding for his cage, because by now telling anyone would mean losing his friends too, in addition to what the assholes had leveraged against him to begin with.

It hadn't even taken that much in the first place. It was embarrassing, really. Just some threats he suspected were terribly clichée: His sister, his mother, himself. If it had been just that last he could have fled, he supposed. America, or something. India, maybe, like John Lennon. But the right combination of threats, hardly original, had made sure he stayed and did what he was told. Gryffindor, he? That fucking hat didn't know what it was on about. 

That fucking hat. What had it even been thinking, sorting him? Stupid fucking thing, as wrong as can be. He wasn't brave, not in the least. He would fit better in any other house than he did in Gryffindor, that was obvious as all hell. He used to think, sometimes, that he did fit in after all, and it must be true because the hat had said so, and the sorting hat was never wrong, but that had been with friends at his back. Once separated from the herd he was just as bloody chicken as anyone else. 

More, probably, cause as far as he could see bravery wasn't even about houses, really. He imagined them threatening Helen, the quiet golden-haired Hufflepuff he had had it bad for forever, and he couldn't imagine her giving in ever, no matter what they threatened. Helen. Just another dream he would never be worthy of now. Maybe he should have been a puff, maybe that would have made him a happy and well-balanced person. Or at least taught him how to fake being one, which would at least have been less dangerous and more pleasant. Or maybe he should have been a Slytherin, heavily invested in his own comfort and survival as he clearly was. Fucking hat! He should go tell it off, he should. Serve it right. 

\----

Fifteen minutes later he was in Dumbledore's office. He had never broken in here before, none of them had, the way they'd found likely to lead there wasn't even on the damned map. He wasn't sure if it was respect that had held them back, or fear of getting caught. Nevermind that, his respect for anyone who took his fraudish self seriously was evaporating fast, and as for fear he had more important things to be afraid of these days. 

He took a sip from his flask for courage, ironically lifting it as a toast to just that. Courage, ha! What a joke. Then he started looking around for the hat. There were lots of interesting things in the office, but he focused as hard as he could and somehow avoided getting too distracted by all the fascinating knick-knacks that did who-knew-what. 

The hat sat on a shelf along with a few other hats he couldn't imagine Dumbledore ever wearing. Maybe they were magical artifacts as well, doing who knew what? No, focus, boy. He leviosaed the hat down, letting it land on the desk in front of him, wand firmly pointed at it as if it was a dangerous thing, which he supposed it was at that, deciding the fate of the wizarding world, one child at the time. Now what? 

“Why did you sort me into Gryffindor, you... hat”, he started. Well, insults had never been his strongest suit. There was no reaction from the hat. 

“I know you can speak, I've seen it seven fucking times, do you think I'm stupid or what,” he shouted. Nothing.

“Tell me what I want to know, or I'll hide you so well not even Dumbledore can find you.” Clearly the old rag of a hat was more Gryffindor than he ever was, because it said nothing. 

“I really need to know,” he begged. “I can't understand it, see? It makes no sense, it's made no sense for years. And it made me be this way and I can't be this way anymore.” 

Still nothing. He took another swig and decided that if the stupid hat didn't want to be a magical hat it could damn well resign itself to being treated as a normal one. There was a mirror on the other side of the desk, and he threw himself down into a deep chair that stood there, sideways so he could face the mirror. As expected he looked absolutely ridiculous. It's even worthless as a hat, he thought. Not exactly a looker, which made two of them, he supposed. Not even Sirius could make this hat look good, though. 

“How rude,” said that voice inside his head he hadn't managed to forget nearly as thoroughly as he thought. Fuck. 

“Great, now you want to talk.”

“I'm on your head now, which makes it possible to have a civil conversation. By the way, I did not appreciate the threat earlier.”

“Yeah, who would,” Pete acknowledged. Being threatened was no fun. 

“It is not the first such I have received. They are usually by children, though, not adolescents. The sorting, you know. Children are very emotionally invested in the sorting.”

“What,” Pete asked, filled with sudden drunk fascination, ”really? How do you deal with that? Put the hat threatening bullies in Slytherin?”

“There might be a slight over-representation there, but no, of course not. In fact I am inclined to give them their wish, whatever that might be. They usually want it a lot, but of course there are exceptions to that as well. It depends on their motivation and thought process.” 

What, what, what

“Well, the children know themselves and their situations very well, for one thing, so that is why I tend to give their wish, even if somewhat violently expressed. That usually just means the child feels urgency, you know, or desperation.”

What a wet rag, Pete thought.

“Drawing conclusions about others based on yourself is not a wise habit, Pettigrew,” the hat answered primly. “Besides, that is hardly my only criterion. There is also the question of how good a fit the house will be, which is where the feelings and thought processes come in. For instance, if someone is terrified by me and still, say, threatens to cut me if they end up in Slytherin, that makes them a pretty safe bet for Gryffindor.”

There it was. There it was. Sorting terrified people into Gryffindor. That's what he was here for, he remembered. To ask the hat why. Why why why did it sort him there? It made no sense, none! 

“Oh, friend,” the hat sighed. “I really cannot promise it was the best possible thing for you. Looking at you now I rather suspect it was not. But I can assure you placing you in Gryffindor did make perfect sense.”

“How,” he demanded harshly. “How the hell did putting me in the house of the brave make 'perfect sense', you incompetent tool?” Actually, that insult had been decent, hadn't it? Maybe he should be drunk more often. 

“You probably should not, but my status as a tool I will admit to,” the hat hummed in his head. “As for your sorting, it really did make sense at the time. You were a very brave child already. Most of the rest of that Gryffindor crop had not really started developing their potential for bravery, but you had.”

He was not going to dignify that with an answer. The hat had probably just confused him with James, and all the feelings that thought stirred was probably something better not poked. There are a lot of kids to sort each year, though. Assuming it had remembered him had been idiotic, as was this whole thing, really... 

“I remember every sorting perfectly,” the hat huffed. It seemed he had finally gotten on its nerves, then, not that he had tried to. Trying, he decided, wasn't for him. Choices. Just let stuff happen, that's the only way he ever got anything done anyway. 

“You were brave,” the hat interrupted his thoughts rather rudely, speaking over them almost, if such a thing was even possible. “You had faced so much fear, and you had dealt with that fear by pure, stubborn bravery. As I said, it made perfect sense to place you in Gryffindor, given your life before Hogwarts.”

So much fear was right enough. His childhood anxiety had been formidable. It had started at seven and for the first year it had just grown wild until it seemed impossible to do, well, anything. They didn't think he would be able to go to Hogwarts. He certainly wasn't able to go to normal school after a while. At first he had assumed he would grow out of it. It made perfect sense to be a terrified seven-year-old, but eleven-year-olds were so big, surely they wouldn't need to be afraid of anything? But after a year he figured maybe they did. After all, he had thought eight-year-olds didn't need to be so terrified either, and it was even worse at eight than it had been at seven. 

The hat was strangely quiet. Asshat. He giggled at his own joke. The hat didn't. What had it said? Dealing bravely with fear or some shit. Fear was right, but dealing bravely? He had faced a lot of seemingly insurmountable fears when attempting to work through the crippling anxiety, it was true, but the thing was, that wasn't the same thing as actual bravery. He'd never even gotten himself up to the level of normal people, for fuck's sake. Had the hat really sorted him into Gryffindor for spending weeks working up the courage to go to the grocery store with his mum, stuff like that? He heard rather than felt the semi-hysterical sob that worked its way out of him. So. The hat was bonkers. Well. That explained quite a lot, actually. Hadn't that been his accusation all along? 

“You could at least defend yourself, hat,” he spat. “You could, you know, pretend you care what your old age dementedness has done to me, and probably to loads of other people too, come to think of it. You should get the old fuck to make a new hat. Then you can retire to some Hogwarts attic, drink fancy drinks with the ghosts or whatever hats like you do in retirement.” Nothing. The audience with his hattiness was over, he suppposed, which was fine by him.

He studied himself glumly in the mirror, hat and all. The thing was, he thought, once in Gryffindor it had been so easy hiding behind other people. There were many people who, much as they loved getting away with things, didn't really give a fuck about risk, or seemed to have much fear at all. Hiding behind the true brave people had probably made him less brave, if anything. See, he knew himself, he was actually pretty clever, wise even. Come to think, he should have clearly been in Ravenclaw all along. He should have threatened the hat at his sorting, he realised, in a way calculated to convince the hat to sort him right. That would have gotten him sent into Ravnclaw for sure. He opened the flask again, toasting wisdom, with as much dignity as he could muster. 

“Realising what you should have done at eleven to get me to sort you into Ravenclaw six and a half year later does not strike me as the hallmark of a true Ravenclaw,” the hat pointed out. “Staircase wit isn't generally considered wit beyond measure, you know.”

“Go back to sleep,” Pete hissed. “You have given me zero reason to trust your judgment when it comes to sorting, you know. And you destroyed my life.”

“Can you really think of anyone more qualified, though,” the hat chided gently. “I am the sorting. Without me there would probably not be one.” God, but the thing was annoying. He supposed it would have nothing left in life if he let it realize how terribly incompetent it was, though. Better not mention that, then. Shit, it could hear that, couldn't it? Oh, he regretted those last few swigs. 

“What you have to understand, though,” the hat continued unaffected, “is that what I am doing is really just fascilitating the sorting. Have you ever heard the saying that the wand chooses the wizard, but the wizard chooses the house?” Pete nodded, frowning. That whole thing didn't go quite well with the whole sorting hat business, come to think of it. 

“That's right!” the hat exclaimed, sounding for all the world like a pleased teacher. “That is quite the point. People may know that it is them who choose the house, but they also have to trust my judgment because otherwise a person's true choice would sometimes fall through. More children would be placed in the wrong house because of family traditions or where their friends with an earlier letter in the alphabet were sorted.”

“So you're saying I can just blame myself, then?”

“No, I am not saying that. Magic doesn't always make sense. But I am not some all-powerful decision maker, it's more like I pull out the decision that is there to be made already.”

“That sounds like horseshit. Sorry.”

“Look, what I saw in your head at eleven, Peter, was a lot of bravery. In the moment I was placed on your head you were scared, but you mastered your fear and let the thing go ahead because you wanted it so much, which is the sort of thing bravery consists of. In your memories I saw a lot of experience with doing similar things before. And I saw a lot of investment in your courage, which made sense given what it had helped you through so far. It had helped you get to Hogwarts, which you wanted so much...” 

“So I really can blame myself, then. For thinking loads of small courages would make any difference when it really counted.”

“No, that's not true. You just got out of the habit of bravery. I cannot tell the future, you know. I had no way of knowing you would sell off your stocks in bravery one by one over the years. I just saw what you started out with.”

One by one? It had only been the once. Well, twice. They'd cornered him and threatened him first, and the moment he'd decided not to tell anyone about the indicent, well. That might count for one. And then it was the giving in. It had felt like a sudden thing, but maybe it wasn't. Hiding behind the true brave people, the real Gryffindors… When had he started thinking of his friends like that? Maybe he hadn't really believed in his bravery for a very long time. Or maybe he had just been so fucking tired of needing to be brave seventy times a day that when he didn't need to anymore he hadn't gone out of his ways to do more than what it took to maintain his friendships. 

…

The sound of someone gently clearing their throat woke him up faster than anything his friends could have thrown at him. Someone trying to wake him politely signaled danger in a way that pranky spells and dirty socks thrown around the dorm didn't. He opened his eyes to Dumbledore looking bemusedly at him, partly obscured by the brim of the hat Peter was still wearing. His head hurt. Oh. 

“Good morning, mister Pettigrew. I am very interested in finding out which of the secret entrances you found,” Dumbledore said. “Would you care to explain your presence in my office this fine morning?”

“Um. I would rather not,” Peter said. His head was a ball of cotton. How was he supposed to think with that? The hat provided no help. He offered it to Dumbledore with a smile that wouldn't look real to a stuffed bear. Dumbledore took it and placed it back on the shelf.

“In that case,” he said, “I think you should run along. You still have the time to eat a quick breakfast before classes if you hurry.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't like it when character's actions are presented as if there is just no making sense of them. Most people can make sense if you let them, even the pretty terrible ones that are written not to. 
> 
> After writing [an intelligible Pansy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8526988) I started thinking that the most unintelligible character in all of Potterverse had to be Peter. So Peter it was. Also, I am forever baffled by Peter Pettigrew's placement into Gryffindor. Maybe it even baffled him?


End file.
